Rating: * * * * *
Verdict: Livewire pianist has no rival in adrenalin-soaked repertoire
Hyperion's Romantic Piano Concerto series has made its reputation tending to such forgotten masters as Bortkiewicz, Goedicke and Melcer-Szczawinski, and now celebrates its 50th edition with one of the most popular of all concert hall composers.
Stephen Hough, a livewire and a maverick who just happens to be one of the very finest contemporary pianists, even surprised himself by taking on Tchaikovsky's complete oeuvre for piano and orchestra. And these four adrenaline-soaked works, as the Englishman describes them, were one of the hits of last year's BBC Proms.
Hough repeated his triumph in Minneapolis and these performances, with the Minnesota Orchestra under Osmo Vanska, have been caught by the Hyperion team.
The First Concerto is the inevitable starting point and Hough's take is awe-inspiring.
In fact, you may need to steady yourself during the breakneck opening Allegro and the final pages erupt in a veritable tornado of notes.
Ecstatic applause from the Minnesota audience lends it all that very special sense of occasion.
The Second Concerto is a work of wild and extravagant extremes. Hough feels the first movement should blaze instead of aiming at the majestic, and he makes sure it happens.
If you believe that Tchaikovsky's original slow movement was too prolix, Hyperion also gives us the seven-minute hack job by Alexander Siloti as well as Hough's own version in which he smoothes things out by tweaking the scoring rather than using scissors. And, when this means some extra pages of dazzling pianism, who would argue?
Anthony Ross contributes some outstanding solo cello in the Second Concerto and is a lyrical companion for Hough in the brilliantly scored and delivered Concert Fantasia of 1884.
The other curiosity is the little-heard Third Concerto, adapted from a first movement originally intended for the Pathetique Symphony.
Along with a subtly yearning meno mosso theme and an electrifying four-minute cadenza in which Hough appears to have at least four hands, there are harmonic moments that border on Prokofiev territory.
Finally, in this age where we treasure our bonuses, two Tchaikovsky songs in luscious solo transcriptions by Hough admirably fit that bill, with None but the lonely heart a particularly elegant tug on the heartstrings.
